Background of the issue:
I followed the WPML prompt in the dashboard to link the live and staging sites. The credits that were previously associated with the staging site are now not accessible to either the staging site or the live site. There are 4018 credits appearing as associated with the hidden link site in my account but I cannot access them.
Symptoms:
Credits are not accessible on either the staging site or the live site despite appearing in the account.
Questions:
How can I access the 4018 credits associated with the staging site?
I'm sorry to hear that you are going throug this and I'm here to help you get this resolved.
Those credits probably got stuck.
So, please let me explain why I think this situation with the credits might be happening.
When you initially install and set up WPML, an automatic translation account id is created automatically in the process.
If you uninstall/reset WPML or reinstall/set WordPress from scratch, then a new automatic translation account id will be generated and the credits will get stuck in the old account.
On this page (https://wpml.org/account), can you click the "add/remove credits” button and move the credits back to your WPML.org account?
Then, please go here (https://wpml.org/account/sites/) > remove the current site key > generate a new one > then go to your website's backend > Plugins > Add new > Commercial > UNregister WPML from the old key > RE-register WPML with the new key.